The Advance to the Seine

My decision, following the collapse of the enemy's
western flank at the end of July, to concentrate upon the
encirclement and destruction of his forces in Normandy,
and to use almost the whole of our available strength
in order to attain this object, marked a considerable departure
from the original Allied plan of campaign.
Under this, as already explained, a primary objective
had been th capture of the Brittany ports, through
which it was intended to introduce the further divisions
from the United States necessary to insure the completion
of the German defeat. The capture of these
ports had been envisaged as a task for the Third Army
as a whole, but in order to accomplish our new plans
for the Normandy battle it was necessary to move the
bulk of General Patton's forces eastward to carry out
the great encircling movement.

The prospects of inflicting a decisive and annihilating
defeat upon the Seventh Army and Panzer Group
West had been so good that I had no hesitation in
making my decision. If their units could be shattered
in Normandy, then I knew that there was o further
German force in France capable of stopping us, particularly
after the Franco-American DRAGOON forces
landed on the Mediterranean coat on 15 August and
proceeded to occupy all the attention of the German
Nineteenth Army. In the event that we obtained the
victory which I anticipated, the Brittany ports would
be isolated without hope of relief, and they would no
longer represent a vitally important factor in our build-up
considerations, since our rapid advance eastward
would be assured and our reinforcements could be introduced
through the Channel ports nearer to the front
lines as these were cleared.

Events demonstrated that the decision to throw the
maximum weight into the Normandy struggle rather
than detach substantial forces to lay siege to the Brittany
ports was fully justified. Even though the battle of
the Falaise-Argentan pocket did not accomplish the
utter annihilation of the German armies in Normandy
they were broken as an effective fighting force, and
our way across France was opened. While Franco-American
armies forced their way up the valley of the
Rhône from the south, our forces swept across the north
of France and through Belgium without a check by
any major delaying action until they stood upon the
frontiers of Germany.

The enemy, appreciating our need for the Brittany
ports under the terms of our original plan, fortified them
and rejected all appeals to surrender. Although the
progress of our eastward advance must have made the
garrisons realize that the ports they held were no longer
necessary to the maintenance of our forces, they continued
to hold out in their usual tenacious fashion, no
doubt with the intention of proving thorns in our flesh
after the manner of the British stand at Tobruk in 1941.

The desperate defense which the enemy was prepared
to offer was revealed in the violent and bitter
struggle to secure the capitulation of St. Malo, and still
more so in the fighting which took place at Brest. By 8
August practically all resistance in the peninsula had
ceased outside the ports, and our forces had taken up
their positions preparatory to attempting the reduction
of these strongholds. At St. Malo, the town was occupied
on 14 August, but the garrison held on grimly in
the Citadel, which did not capitulate until the 17th.
Even after that the enemy batteries on the Ile de
Cézembre, commanding the harbor approaches, continued
to resist until 2 September despite bombardment
by HMS Malaya on 31 August.

At Brest the resistance of th garrison of 30,000 men
under General Ramcke was more prolonged notwithstanding
the air and naval bombardments which we
used to supplement the land attacks. Determined to
hold on to the great port, which had been his chief
Atlantic base for the U-boat campaign against Allied
shipping, the enemy had to be driven back in house-to-house
fighting before he finally gave in on 18 September.
When at last the Allies gained possession, the found
the port installations so completely wrecked as to be
capable of rehabilitation only to a minor degree, and
our plans for the introduction fo trans-Atlantic troop
convoys to the once magnificent harbor had to be abandoned.

The heavy price which the enemy's resistance had
compelled us to pay for this barren prize convinced me
that the further employment of large numbers of our
troops to secure the reduction fo the remaining enemy
garrisons in Brittany--at Lorient, St. Nazaire, and Quiberon

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Bay--was not worth while. At that time our
advance to the east had progressed so rapidly that our
men were on the threshold of the enemy's homeland,
and I wished to employ all the weight we could muster
to deliver a knock-out blow which might bring Germany
to her knees before her exhausted armies could
reform and renew the struggle on the Siegfried Line.
Already, on 5 September, the Third Army had been
freed from the embarrassment of commitments in the
west, far from the areas where its main forces were operating,
by the transfer of VIII Corps to the newly created
Ninth Army, under Lieut. Gen. W.H. Simpson. After
the fall of Brest, however, this army also was moved into
the line on the German border, leaving the task of containing
the remaining enemy in Brittany to the French
Forces of the interior, who maintained the seige during
the succeeding months, under difficult conditions, with
such equipment as it was in our power to provide. Although
these troops might not be able to secure the
capitulation of the German garrisons, I felt certain that
the latter were now in no condition to adopt a policy of aggression.

While VIII Corps was occupied in Brittany, XV
Corps of the Third Army pushed eastward and then
north to Argentan in the move to encircle the German
forces in Normandy. While the enemy was still struggling
to escape through the Falaise-Argentan gap, General
Patton with XII and XX Corps began to dash eastward
across France north of the Loire in another wider
encircling movement. As the battle of the pocket drew
to a close, XV Corps also joined in this advance, leaving
V Corps of the First Army to complete the task of closing
the gap north of Argentan. With his main forces
trapped and broken in Normandy, the enemy had no
means of checking the Third army drive, the brilliant
rapidity of which was perhaps the most spectacular ever
seen in modern mobile warfare. The three corps, each
spearheaded by an armored division, raced headlong
toward Paris and the Seine with an impetus and spirit
characteristic of their leader, at once guarding the flank
of the armies to the north and seeking fresh objectives
of their own.

The primary objective of the Third Army advance
was to deny to the enemy the use of the key lines of
communication running through the Paris-Orléans gap,
between the Seine and Loire Rivers. As has already
been seen, the cutting of the bridges over these rivers
had compelled the enemy to route part of his supplies
and reinforcements from the east to Normandy through
this gap, and now it was vital that we should cut it, not
only to prevent the German forces in Normandy from
receiving their necessary supplies, but also to bar the
most convenient line of retreat from their doomed positions.
We had prepared an airborne operation designed
to accomplish the seizure of this strategic area ahead of
the land advances, but, as events proved, General Patton's
rapid moves made this unnecessary. By 17 August-2
days before the earliest possible date fo the
airborne operation--Chartres and Dreux were captured,
and the routes running to the south of Paris were virtually
blocked. On the 19th the process was completed
when XV Corps reached the Seine at Mantes-Gassicourt;
with this important communications center in Allied
hands, the roads to Normandy from Paris itself were
severed. Below this point, no bridges across the river
remained open, and the enemy, deprived of all hope
of supplies from the southeast, had to retreat toward the
ferries lower down the river as his only means of escape.

Meanwhile XI Corps, on the southern flank of the
Third Army, pushed through Vendôme to reach
Orléans on 17 August, bypassing the small groups of
the enemy mustered at the Loire crossings upstream
from Tours. Advancing parallel with XII Corps, on
its left flank, was XX Corps, whose patrols reached
Fountainbleau on 20 August. During the following
days the tanks swept like a sickle around the southeast of
Paris to Melun, driving the enemy back across the Seine.
Other elements forced their way past the strongpoints
defending the Ling and Yonne Rivers, and by 25
August the spearhead of XII Corps was 40 miles east
of Troyes. The pursuit toward Germany continued,
so that within 1 month of the day on which the
Third Army became operational in France it had not
only broken out of Normandy and through Brittany
but had secured the line of the Loire and had advanced
140 miles beyond Paris to within 50 miles of the German border.

Air power again played an important part in making
the rapidity of this advance possible. To each of
the armored divisions was attached a fighter-bomber
group belonging to XIX Tactical Air Command of the
U.S. Ninth Air Force, providing the "eyes" of the
columns and smashing the enemy's troop concentration,
armor, and supply system in advance of the ground
forces. The closeness of the air-ground liaison in this
work was one of the remarkable features of the advance
and produced extraordinarily successful results. The
air arm also took over the task of watching the long

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flank of the Loire and of preventing any dangerous
concentration of the enemy there. Strafing and bombing
of the small parties of Germans prevented their
coalescing into an effective force, and the Third Army
was thus able to pursue its advance untrammeled by
the necessity of detaching troops to protect its flank.

The chief difficulty in the drive eastward arose
not so much from the armed opposition encountered
as from the problems of supply. Already at the beginning
of August, when General Patton's men were
overrunning the interior of Brittany, the necessity of
transporting from Cherbourg and the beaches the gasoline,
ammunition, and other supplies needed to maintain
the flying armored columns had, as previously
mentioned, imposed a severe strain upon our supply
organization. Now that the spearheads were far on
their way across France to the east, these difficulties
were multiplied a hundredfold. With the Brittany
ports either wrecked or remaining in German hands, all
the materials of war had still to pass through the overworked
Normandy bases. As the Third Army neared
the Seine, truck transportation became utterly inadequate

Advance to the Seine

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to cope with the situation, and we were compelled
to have recourse to air lift, by troop-carrier planes supplemented
by heavy bombers, in order to enable the
speed of the advance to be maintained. It was at first
planned to allot planes for this task sufficient to lift an
average of 1,000 tons per day to the Third Army forward
bases, but when the capture of Dreux rendered the
projected airborne operation in the Paris-Orléans gap
unnecessary, this figure was increased to 2,000 tons per day.

Invaluable as this air lift proved, however, the use
of the planes for such a purpose was inevitably attended
by other draw-backs. The required numbers could only
be provided by withdrawing craft from the newly
created First Allied Airborne Army. This army had
been instructed to prepare for operations, not only to
seize the Paris-Orléans gap, but also to assist in crossing
the Seine and the Somme should the enemy attempt a
stand on the lines of the rivers, and later in breaching
the Siegfried Line and in crossing the Rhine. Because
of the obligation of making ready for these undertakings,
the withdrawing of the planes caused considerable
embarrassment to the Airborne Army's commander,
Lieut. Gen. L.H. Brereton, whose program of training
was thereby interrupted. he justly pointed out that
there was a risk that continued cargo carrying would
render the troop carrier commands unfit for a successful
airborne operation. Since the procedure and training
required for the two functions were in many respects
diametrically opposed, combined exercises by airborne
troops and the air transport personnel were of the utmost
importance. I consider, however, that my decision to
use the planes for ground resupply purposes was justified
by the fact that thereby the speed of our armies'
advances was maintained, and as a consequence of this
the projected airborne operations in France were rendered unnecessary.

When our troops had reached the Seine at Melun
above and Mantes-Gassicourt below the city, the position
of the German garrison in Paris became intolerable.
Not only were they faced with a threat of encirclement,
but the Allies were at Versailles, threatening a frontal
attack. Within the city, the police went on strike and
defied the German authorities when the latter laid siege
to the Prefecture of Police on the Ile-de-la-Cité on 19
August. The traditional barricades appeared in the
streets, the resistance movement came into the open, and
for over a week a strange, skirmishing battle was fought
through the city. While General von Choltitz, the German
commander, made no attempt to destroy the bridge
or other installations, a truce to enable the garrison of
10,000 me to withdraw broke down, and the enemy
troops retired into the hotels and public buildings which
they had turned into strongpoints.

For the honor of being the first Allied troops to
reenter Paris, the French 2d Armored Division was
brought up from the Argentan sector where it had
formed part of the Third Army spearhead in the original
encircling move resulting in the battle of the pocket. On
24 August the division's tanks were in the outskirts of
Leclerc, received the surrender of the German commander.
During the past 4 years this division had
fought its way from Lake Chad, across the torrid wastes
of the Sahara, to play a notable part in the victorious
Tunisian campaign, had been brought to England, and
had come thence to assist in the liberation of metropolitan
France. For these men to accept in Paris the surrender
of the enemy, under whose dominions their
country had lain for so long, was a fitting triumph in
the odyssey which took them from Central Africa to Berchtesgaden.

Meanwhile, following the XV Corps thrust to the
Seine at Mantes-Gassicourt on 19 August, the 79th Infantry
Division had established the first bridgehead
across the river at the nearby village of Rollebois on 20
August. The remainder of the Corps proceeded to press
down the west bank in an endeavor to deny to the
enemy the lower crossings and thus to cut off the only
remaining escape routes of the elements which had
struggled through the jaws of the Falais-Argentan gap.
In this operation our forces encountered stiffening resistance
as they advanced, and at Ellbeuf the enemy made
a desperate stand to guard his last ferries as the remainder
of his beaten army streamed across the river.

Following the elimination of the Falaise pocket, the
U.S. First Army took over from the Third Army the
forces attacking northward toward the mouth of the
Seine, while the British and Canadians closed in from
the west. Day by day the enemy-held territory west
of the river shrank. The Canadians having overcome
fierce resistance in Cabourg and other coastal strongpoints,
the enemy attempted a delaying action on the
line of the Tougues River. But that barrier was forced
on 24 August, and, supported by the naval guns offshore,
the eastward advance continued. Evreux had fallen on
the preceding day, and now Lisieux was cleared. On 25
August Elbeuf was captured, and by the 30th the last

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remaining pockets had been eliminated; apart from the
beleaguered garrisons in Brittany, no German soldier
remained west of the Seine who was not in Allied hands.
Our bridgeheads were linked up along the whole length
of the river, and our forces were pouring over in continued
pursuit. The enemy's disorganization was such
that any attempt to make a stand on the eastern bank
was out of the question, particularly with the Third
army providing yet a further threat to his line of retreat.
Once again, therefore, the accomplishments of our
ground forces had rendered unnecessary a projected airborne
operation designed to facilitate the overcoming
of a potentially difficult obstacle. The battle of western
France was over, and the liberation of the entire country
had been assured. On 31 August General Hans
Eberbach, commander of the ill-fated German Seventh
Army, was captured with his staff while at breakfast or Amiens.

That the enemy was able to extricate a considerable
portion of his forces via the few crossings left to him
following our advance to Elbeuf was due to the skill
with which he organized his system of ferries and pontons.
These had been established earlier, following our
bombing of the bridges, as a means of transporting supplies
and reinforcements to Normandy, and now they
were to prove invaluable as a means of escape. Some of
the pontons were cunningly hidden under camouflage
against the banks by day to avoid detection from the air,
and then swung across the stream at night. By such
means, 27,000 troops were transported over the river at a
single crossing in three days.

Nevertheless, the losses sustained by the Germans
at the Seine were enormous. The dense concentrations
of tanks and vehicles along the roads leading to the
crossings afforded ideal target for strafing and bombing
attacks from the air, and whole columns were annihilated
thus. On the river itself, during the seven days
preceding 23 August when the exodus was at its peak,
166 barges were destroyed, 10 probably destroyed and
116 damaged, and 3 large river steamers were sunk.
Over 2,000 sorties a day were flown by aircraft of AEAF
on these missions, while hundreds of planes of the Strategic
Air Forces added their weight to the attacks.
These attacks were not carried out entirely without
opposition, for since the beginning of the battle of the
Falaise pocket the Luftwaffe had come up in greater
strength than for some time past in a desperate effort to
assist the German ground forces. The enemy suffered
severely in this air effort, however, and the losses
sustained--coupled with the effects of the Third Army's
thrust eastward which necessitated a rapid withdrawal
to more distant bases on the part of the German fighter
squadrons--were such as to produce a marked decline in
the scale of the air opposition subsequently encountered.

Although the rush crossing of the lower Seine,
planned to be made by 21 Army Group and he U.S.
First Army in phase with the Third Army advance
through the Paris-Orléans gap, had been somewhat
delayed by the stubborn nature of the enemy's rearguard
actions, the elimination of the last German pocket were
of the river nevertheless marked the completion of a
great victory. The German Seventh Army and the
Fifth Panzer Army had been decisively defeated, and
strength of the First and Fifteenth Armies. Sine our
landings on 6 June, of the enemy's higher commanders,
three field marshals, and one army commander had
been dismissed or incapacitated by wounds, and 1 army
commander, 3 corps commanders, 165 divisional commanders,
and 1 fortress commander had been killed or captured.

The enemy's losses in men and equipment since the
commencement of the campaign had been enormous.
Of his panzer divisions, the equivalent of five had been
destroyed and a further six severely mauled. The
equivalent of 20 infantry divisions had been eliminated
and 12 more (including 3 crack parachute divisions)
had been badly cut up. Three divisions were
trapped in Brittany and another division was isolated
in the Channel Islands.

By 25 August the enemy had lost, in round numbers,
400,000 killed, wounded, or captured, of which
total 200,000 were prisoners of war. One hundred thirty-five
thousand of these prisoners had been taken since the
beginning of our breakthrough on 25 July. Thirteen
hundred tanks, 20,000 vehicles, 500 assault guns, and
1,500 field guns and heavier artillery pieces had been
captured or destroyed, apart from the destruction inflicted
upon the Normandy coast defenses.

The German Air Force also had taken a fearful
beating. Two thousand three hundred and seventy-eight
aircraft had been destroyed in the air and 1,167
on the ground, in addition to 270 probably destroyed and
1,028 probably damaged in the air. These figures are
all the more remarkable when on considers the depleted
strength of the Luftwaffe and the feebleness of
its attempts to counter the Allied operations.

By the end of August the morale of the enemy, as

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revealed in the prisoners who passed through the Allied
cages, was distinctly lower than it had been a month
earlier. A lack of determination was particularly noticeable
among the infantry, whose outlook, for the most
part, was one of bewilderment and helplessness. This
state of mind was produced by the rapidity of the Allies'
movements, their overwhelming superiority in equipment
(both on the ground and in the air), and by the
Germans' own losses of arms and transport which had
left them without the necessary means of mounting an
adequate defense. Our air strafing attacks had especially
contributed toward breaking the enemy's spirit. The
great majority of the enlisted men from the ordinary
infantry divisions stated that they were glad to be out
of the war, but the élite of the SS formations still
retained something of their former arrogant self-confidence.
Many of the senior officers were now prepared
to recognize the inevitability of defeat, but the younger
ones, in whom the Nazi spirit was strongest, still proclaimed
the invincibility of the German cause. The
army as a whole, despite its losses, had clearly not yet
reached the stage of mass morale collapse, and, as events
subsequently showed, the escaping elements were still
capable, when given a pause for breath, of renewing the
struggle with all their old determination on the threshold
of the Fatherland. Of the generals participating in
the Normandy campaign, it is interesting to note that
all appeared on the list prepared by the Russians of those
guilty of atrocities in the east; it was not likely that
surrender would be forthcoming from such men. In
fact, although we might have reached the military conditions
of 1918, the political conditions which produced
the German collapse in that year were still remote.

Behind the strategic reasons for our success lay the
many factors embodied in the excellence of the Allied
teamwork. This, as in the Mediterranean campaigns,
again demonstrated its ability, extending through all
services, to overcome the most adverse conditions. Despite
difficulties due to the enforced separation of commanders
and the burden of maintaining signal communications
over long distances and in rapidly changing
situations, the command system, based upon complete
inter-Allied confidence, functioned smoothly throughout
the campaign.

In assessing the reasons for victory, one must take
into account not only the achievements in the field but
the care and foresight which were applied to the preparations
before D-day. It was to the meticulous care in
planning and preparation by my staff, supported resolutely
in all important aspects by the Combined Chiefs
of Staff, that we owed such essential factors as the degree
of surprise achieved in our landings, the excellence
and sufficiency of our amphibious equipment, and the
superb organization which lay behind the miraculous
achievements of our supply and maintenance services.

While it is true that we had hoped that the tactical
developments of the first few days would yield us the
territory south and southeast of Caen, so suitable for the
construction of necessary airfields and for exploitation
of our strength in armor, the fact remains that in the
broad strategic development we attained our anticipated
line of D-plus-90 two weeks prior to that date and in substantial
accordance with our planned strategic program.
Moreover, I am convinced that without the brilliant
preparatory work of our joint air forces--a belief in the
effectiveness of which was the very cornerstone of the
original invasion conception--the venture could never
logically have been undertaken.

The greatest factor of all lay in the fighting
qualities of the soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the
United Nations. Their valor, stamina, and devotion
to duty had proved beyond praise, and continued to be
so as the Battle of France gave place to the Battle of Germany.